While TV didn't begin in
the 1950s, practically no one had a set before then, there were
few shows, and people looked to radio and newspapers for
entertainment and news. In 1947 RCA mass produced a 7 inch TV and
170,000 of them sold. By 1949, 1 million sets had been sold. As
the Fifties progressed the post-war boom included both babies and
TV. In 1950 there are about 10 million sets in the U.S.

As TV became more commonly available, people were enthralled.
This was much better than radio. You became very popular, very
quickly if your family had a TV. And people would linger outside
the windows of stores that sold this new wonder - hoping to catch
a glimpse of the future.

The first thing you need to know about the early days of TV is
that there wasn't much of it. Mostly, in the afternoons and
evenings.

The second thing you need to know is that it was black and white.
Actually, it was various shades of gray. Dithered, sort of. Even
if color TV had been offered, your black and white set
wouldn't have known the difference.

And, ladies, just think of it, No Remote Control!

You received your TV shows via an antenna. A big ugly thing that
stuck up way above the roof line of your house. The thing had to
be pointed correctly to receive your local stations. Customarily
this directional adjustment was accomplished by Dad going outside
to manually turn the antenna while someone with an eye on the TV
yelled out an open window, "no, too far, come back a
little."

The earliest TV shows were really radio and vaudeville moving to
a new medium. Some of these were quite successful. I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke come to mind. Variety Shows
populated the early years which gave many a vaudevillian comedian
a chance to show off sight gags that radio wouldn't permit.

Before LOST and 24 there were shows like
The
Jack Benny Show and Father Knows Best coming to you over the airwaves.
These were comedic and entertaining character studies that would,
one day, give birth to the modern sitcom.

1953 the FCC had settled on the technical specifications for
color standards, but broadcasting in color was expensive and few
people had replaced those black and white sets with color ones.
After all, they had just bought the B&W.

This would quickly change. By 1962 a million color sets had sold,
by 1965, 5 million and the networks had gone to color, by 1970
there were 37 million color sets in the U.S.

Among the first TV shows included about 120 Westerns. Mostly in
black and white, cowboys set the standards of right and wrong and
taught us about heroes. A few went to color. Bonanza, the Virginian and Wagon Train, the
latter two experimenting with 90 minute formats.

As a reflection of changing social sensibilities, Bill Cosby
becomes the first black lead on prime time TV in 1965 on I Spy. This paves the way for Greg Morris
on Mission Impossible
Clarence Williams of Mod Squad
and Don Mitchell of Ironside.

We watched Nixon lose a debate to Kennedy and then in despair
over four days, watched Kennedy assassinated and buried.

Maybe the Viet Nam War so confused our notion of good guys and
bad, or maybe we had evolved socially to the place where white
guys wearing red makeup to pass as "injuns" was
uncomfortable. I leave that for social historians. The fact
remains that by 1970 the Western had gone thataway.

Variety shows are no longer with us either. The sitcom thrives
and every one of those million dollar per episode Friend's
actors owe respect to Lucille Ball and
Dick Van Dyke who paved the
way.